The Nth Lives
Ki-jo had come back to the morning of June 25, 1950.
He opened his eyes in a thatched house in Deokjeong, in the pitch-dark hour before dawn, and for a moment he could not make sense of where he was. There was no bullet hole in his back, and no blood rising in his throat.
Is this a dream... or am I awake......
He scrambled up and ran for Deokjeong Station. When he found the stationmaster and took the measure of things, it was that day from the past. Whatever the reason, wondering whether such a thing was even possible was a luxury he could not afford. He tore home as if out of his mind.
Sunrye had the baby bound to her back in a quilted wrap and was cooking rice in the kitchen.
"Honey, pack the bags. Hurry!"
Ki-jo was already rushing her.
"What's happened? Packing, all of a sudden?"
"There's no time to dawdle. Don't you hear the guns? The People's Army is coming down from the north. War's broken out."
"War?"
"If we stay here, I'm going to die. We have to run for Uijeongbu. Now."
At the words that war had come, and that her husband might die, Sunrye's mind snapped clear. She would not let their child grow up without a father. She helped him pack in a frenzy, and together they finished what little they could carry.
Lee Ki-jo with their belongings lashed to an A-frame, and Sunrye with a bundle of clothes balanced on her head and the baby on her back, left the village at once. As they went, artillery began to sound from the direction of Dongducheon, and at that sound Sunrye knew her husband had told the truth.
Neighbors, seeing them flee at first light, asked what was the matter. Each time, the couple told them war had broken out and that they ought to evacuate at once.
They walked four hours to reach Uijeongbu Station, thirty ri away—some seven miles. Sweat poured off Ki-jo and Sunrye like rain in the stifling heat, but they feared for the child more than for themselves. A baby not yet a year old, strapped to his mother's hot back under the scorching sun, could hardly be at ease. He cried all the way to the edge of Uijeongbu, and only then, exhausted, fell asleep.
It was Ki-jo's second life, and his first attempt at escape.
Around five that afternoon, when the couple reached the Han, the baby's condition threw them into dread.
"Honey, the child is burning up......"
Sunrye was close to tears. Ki-jo laid a hand on the boy's forehead. It was as hot as an earthen crock left out in the full blaze of summer.
"First let's cool him in the river."
Still holding the child, Ki-jo waded slowly into the Han. Careful not to startle him, he let the water take them from the feet upward, then sank down until the baby was submerged to the neck. Sunrye wet her hands and wiped the little face and head. As the fever eased a little, the child looked up at Ki-jo with glazed eyes.
"There now...... little one, hold on. Live with your papa. Let's live together......"
Once the fever had come down, the young couple ate, on the bank, the plain rice they had carried from home. It was the first meal they had taken since they fled. But no sooner had they finished than the child, briefly improved, sickened again. That he would not nurse, and had gone so limp he could not even whimper, grieved them and filled them with a black unease.
"Honey, fleeing is all well and good, but we have to save the child first."
"Of course. Yeongsu comes first. We have to save him."
Near the Hangang Footbridge they began to search for a doctor. The sun was sliding low in the west when they found one at last and knocked, and an elderly physician came to the door.
"Please, save our child. Doctor, we beg you."
The moment the old doctor saw the child's color, he knew the baby would die soon if left untreated.
"Come in."
He did not so much as ask whether the young couple had any money; he treated the child first. News and rumor that disaster had broken out in the North were already spreading through Seoul, yet it still seemed impossible that anything would reach the capital itself. He prescribed a fever remedy, brought the temperature down, and let the couple sleep in the clinic's waiting room. Two days passed before the child was plainly better.
At one in the afternoon on June 27, 1950, the radio announced that the ROK Army had retaken Uijeongbu.
Ki-jo was unsettled to find it different from the future he had lived. He was certain Seoul had fallen to the People's Army in three days, and yet here they were saying the enemy had been thrown back at Uijeongbu.
Then again, it wasn't as if I saw the city taken on the twenty-eighth with my own eyes......
Even so, when he recalled how the army had been driven all the way back to the Nakdong River line, he knew they still had to flee.
"Doctor, this is all the money we have...... I'm sorry......"
When the shabby young couple drew out their little cloth pouch of coins and offered it, the doctor waved them off.
"Pay me later. This clinic will always be right here. When your circumstances improve, come and find me."
He felt nothing for them but pity. A couple of modest means, frightened of the war, meant to go south with an infant in their arms; to take a fee from such people felt like stripping them of everything they owned.
"Thank you, Doctor......"
In place of payment, Ki-jo and Sunrye stayed one day more and scrubbed the clinic clean, inside and out. They meant to show him every bit of gratitude that was in their power, and to set out south with the child the next day.
But at half past two on the morning of the twenty-eighth, the Hangang Footbridge—Seoul's only bridge across the Han—was blown.
Ki-jo and Sunrye, who had come early to cross by it, stood there in blank despair.
"Dr. Syngman Rhee said he would hold Seoul. He told us not to leave. Honey......"
They carried the child down beneath the bridge. Ferryboats were taking people across, but even if they gave every coin they had, it would not make the fare. Give up the rice they had carried on their backs, and they would starve. There was no way forward and no way back.
Ki-jo gave up the crossing. He took his wife and child and hid in nearby Yongsan, hoping to escape conscription by the People's Army. That attempt failed as well.
It was Yeongsu's crying that undid them.
Dragged once more all the way to the Nakdong River front, Ki-jo wished with a fierce intensity to return to the past, and again he succeeded.
This time he would get medicine in advance to bring his son's fever down, and he would not walk all the way to Seoul. In that second life Yeongsu had fallen ill because the long walk had given him heatstroke. On the morning of June 25 he went to Deokjeong Station, laid his situation before the stationmaster, and got aboard a train as far as Cheongnyangni. That same day he crossed the river by the Hangang Footbridge.
Knowing Seoul would fall on the twenty-eighth, Ki-jo was relieved that he still had some three days' grace. This time he would go no farther than Suwon, and he would not force the pace. So the child would not take the heat, they rested in the shade by day and moved by night. They waited for sunset, walked until dawn, and on the morning of June 26 arrived in Suwon.
This time it was his wife who fell ill. Sunrye was seized by violent vomiting and diarrhea, and that was a calamity—if the mother was sick, who would nurse the baby? The well water she had drunk on the road to Suwon seemed not to have agreed with her. Ki-jo had drunk from the same well and was perfectly well.
He urged her toward a hospital, but Sunrye refused. She would not have money spent on herself. There was nothing for it but to wait until the sickness passed. While they lingered in Suwon, rumor came that the People's Army was driving down upon the city. She did not recover easily. The sound of the guns confirmed that the enemy had reached the approaches.
"Take Yeongsu and go. I'll follow after you. We'll meet again in Busan."
"What are you saying? Do you think a parting like that is easy? The baby has to nurse!"
"I'm sorry for holding you back. Honey......"
Sunrye broke down and wept.
In the end, on the fourth of July, Suwon fell to the People's Army. Ki-jo turned his life back once more.
The fourth attempt at escape failed in Daejeon. This time he was conscripted into the ROK Army and thrown onto the front.
The fifth ended just short of Daegu, when his wife and child were killed by the strafing guns of an American fighter.
Each time he rewound the past, until at last they could reach Busan unharmed, the eleven numbers that had floated before his eyes disappeared. Even so, Ki-jo was content. It was enough that he could keep his wife and his son alive.
Time went on. His wife, Yang Soonrye, lived another twenty-nine years, then died of cancer in 1979, far too soon, at forty-nine. Seventeen years after that, in 1996, their son Yeongsu died without warning.
When the wife and the son he had saved only by spending the last of his strength went ahead of him, Ki-jo could find no more will to live. He wanted to put an end to a life that had been grueling, thankless, and empty. But he held on. One chance to move through time still remained to him.
With that last chance he could set everything right. He could save the wife who had gone after a lifetime of nothing but pitiful hardship, and the son and daughter-in-law who had departed so meaninglessly.
He prepared without ceasing. He stored up knowledge that would serve him when he returned to the 1950s, and he learned English. Whenever the studying grew too hard to bear, he sought out art museums on the internet and soothed his sorrow among the works.
Lee Ki-jo endured the emptiness of living and waited until he should die a natural death. He held out a hope, as well, that the power to move through time, which had never shown itself in his son, might appear in his grandson. But hope was only hope. For as long as he lived, no sign emerged that the boy shared his gift. He could only wish that the records of the past he had gathered, and the little money he had set aside in a safe, might one day be of help to him.
In 2019, at the age of ninety, a death that seemed the will of Heaven came for him at last. He drew in his final breath and made ready to travel through time. His aim was to return to the days before cancer took his wife, to live for her sake, and to change the course of his son's life.
The face of his grandson, Suhyeon, wavered before him. If he changed the past, the child would never be born. It felt as though his heart would tear in two, yet he resolved to take that, too, as Heaven's will.
In the moment before his breath failed, the last number left to him—twelve—blazed up and filled his sight with light.